Free Healthcare costs you plenty

Just a separate thread to point out the obvious.

Healthcare is never free.

It does cost someone money to supply the building, the skills, the people, the supplies, the medicine, the maintenance, transportation, etc.

Here's a simplistic example of overhead. Set the value of the amount it costs to provide healthcare at 1.0. Set the number of government agencies involved at three (state, federal, local agency). Set the effectiveness of money at .80 (80% of the money passing through the agency is passed through). Send $100 through three agencies to the medical group who is the fourth recipient of money. That $100 goes to state becomes $80 to the federal, then $64 goes to the local agency who pays the medical group $51.20. You just wasted $48.80.

That giant sucking sound is called Big Government.

Originally posted by Dbriefed
Just a separate thread to point out the obvious.

Healthcare is never free.



That giant sucking sound is called Big Government.

All those people who voted for politicians to give them free healthcare will notice yet another government agancy taking a chunk out of their paycheck soon.

Those who promise free lunches get the votes every time; and deliver the shaft every time

Okay, while we are playing 'made up math':

Insurance premiums for 1 year @ $300 per month = $3,600
Stay relatively healthy for 7 years = 7 x $3,600 = $25,200
Get sick.
Hospitalized for a couple of days @ $3,000 per day = $6,000
Deductible of $3,000 per year = $6,000 - $3,000 = $3,000 paid by insurance.
Your insurance premiums + deductible = $25,200 + $3,000 = $28,200
Insurance company out by $3,000 = $25,200 - $3,000 = $22,200 PROFIT. YAY!
Although I didn't factor in that the premiums ALWAYS go up every year, and how that "$3,000" they paid was renegotiated to $1,900 for them, but not for you.

Following claim, your premiums are now $500 a month (because you are now a liability). That's $6,000 a year.

Stay healthy for two years = $12,000
Your old sickness comes back.
Hospitalized for a couple of days @ $3,500 a day (that went up too as the insurance premiums on their liability insurance is crippling) = $7,000
Deductible of $5,000 a year (remember you're a liability now).
Insurance company calls it a 'pre-existing condition' and won't pay anything.

You need to find the extra $2,000 from somewhere - perhaps your savings.
You've spent $19,000 in two years, and you have not taken a penny back from the insurance company....
If you do the math, you would have been better off not having insurance and paying in cash for services. Nine years of relatively good health (save four days) at the cost of over $47K. You've spent the equivalent of a years wages on four days of treatment (actually about an hour total of actually being seen by healthcare professionals).

Multiply those kinds of numbers by every working person in the country and you have a big cash cow for the insurance companies. The politicians turn a blind eye because they insurance companies spent $324Million on campaign contributions in the last twenty years.

Nobody really believes that there's any such thing as "free" healthcare. They know the money has to come from somewhere. Still, better an AIG executive gets a bonus than we help a malnourished child in Alabama (and, despite what the MSM tells you, there are a lot of those).

Be thankful that you have your health, and your relative wealth. If you get sick, with anything long term, you will quickly find yourself extremely poor as well as sick. Let's hope you don't lose your job, your house, and your savings, and your pension to keep you alive...

Remember that big pharma needs their pound of flesh too. You could, theoretically, have a generic drug that costs mere pennies, but big pharma are not letting the license go and the pills are $500 a month. Every month. You could possibly have had a different drug altogether, but the pharmaceutical company has spent a lot of money rewarding the doctors who prescribe this drug against the others.

The insurance companies will not reward your long term loyalty. Just don't die. They cannot collect premiums when you die.

Socialised medicine is not a harbinger of Communism. It's the people doing something for the people. A nation without its people is nothing. Turning their health into big business is a crime.

Why, exactly, couldn't this have been posted in the original healthcare thread?

Here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

-Dev

[edit on 11-12-2009 by DevolutionEvolvd]

reply to post by Badgered1
Well at least that year you paid $3,600 and insurance paid your $6,000 bill. That year you made money. Over two years you out only 20%. If you spent no money beyond two years on medical costs you were not partaking of any preventative medicine.

Insurance payments exceeding actual costs was one reason I never bought health insurance in my 20's. I paid my minor medical bills out of pocket. I was healthy, and I needed that extra couple of hundred per year. I went by that philosophy on other types of insurance until it was required. After all, I always spent more on insurance than I got out of it.

Sometimes what happens to a persons health is in the 'act of god' category. Or better yet, the 'luck of the draw'. Sometimes we have to accept the fact that we're not as lucky as the average person; and we're going to get sick, we're going to live with a disease, or that we're now dying.

Healthcare is not a right, that would be a huge problem for the 139 Million American employees where our population is 305 Million. Imagine the burden of medical care costs for a nation with over a Billion people like India or China. Some people will have to go without.

reply to post by Badgered1


I agree with you 100%. But without these Pharma companies who would build Miami for you. Medicine that cost me only $ 2/00 in country of my birth and I don't need to see Doctor for it, similar medicine here cost me over $ 80/00 out of pocket only let alone the cost of the Doctor visit. This is robbery that robbers got it set up this way with the help of the Government and Republican Senators. I tried to import that medicine just for myself. It was confiscated.